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spongetech

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It has been an eventful summer in Lunchsketball, despite the uneventful blog. Here are some of the highlights:

For starters, consider the introduction of a new Lunchsketballer, Diana, aka “The Urbin Legend” who made history in June as the first basketball-player-who-is-a-girl to come join the game in quite a while. Diana contributed fierce defense, while also bringing an air of class to the game. Said Gary, aka G-Money, “She wasn’t dirty, and she didn’t call anybody any names. And she smelled nice.”

The duration of the games has once again been adjusted. The final score was reduced to 50 points, after basketball games began reaching 1 hour from start to finish, causing players to use vacation hours to cover extended lunch hours. Gary, who has accrued a surplus of vacation hours because he has been with his employer for 45 years, remains open to longer games.

Time to say good bye to the Under Armour 295 Spongetech basketball. It was a ball ahead of its time, spurned by the world only because it was different. A common complaint was that it was too bouncy, and so to alleviate the situation, air was drained. Too much air was drained though, and the Spongetech now collects dust, flat and un-usable.

New Years Resolution Update:

Earlier in the year, a set of challenging, yet reasonable New Year’s goals were announced for a handful of players. One of them, John, aka Vercace, was challenged to play in ten (10) games of basketball during the year 2013. Throughout the year, this blog excitedly followed John’s progress, offering encouragement all along the way. John appeared to be well along the path to achieving this goal, having already been credited with playing in one (1) game, with nearly half of the year remaining.

Now, unfortunately, there is a serious problem. A scandal. Yes, in this current news environment that is so weary with stories of affairs, mistresses and harassment, there is no choice at this point but to face yet another instance of embarrassing infidelity: John has been cheating on Lunchsketball with Ping-Pong.

Each day, on their way to play basketball, players like Jorge and Darin would pass by John’s office. He seemed so hard at work, too busy at his desk to spare the time to join the guys. Was he too busy? The truth is that John would later slink back to the warehouse, via a rarely-used back door, and meet up for a quick game of ping-pong. Sometimes 5 days a week he would rendezvous with ping-pong in that dirty, desperate warehouse, for a cheap thrill where nobody was watching.

Now he is very brazen about it all. He’ll tell you that he is happier with ping-pong, as though what he had with Lunchsketball is something that can be shrugged off at a whim.

Will he come to his senses? Will he seek redemption? Will he see that 5 months is still plenty of time to play in 9 games? Time will tell.

Injury Report

Tim, aka Benjamin Button, suffered a really gross finger injury in June. In his own words, “The blood on my finger nail was blood from the broken bone that was just oozing up and out the finger nail.”

It has been a tough year for Tim, and yet, injury after injury, as doctors tell him that his playing career is over, he keeps coming back to the court. He is a Lunchsketball immortal: Call him “The Rylander”.

In other injury news from June and July, Gary has a sore achilles, Matt has not dislocated his shoulder, Phil left the court in an ambulance but he’s fine now, and Darin is getting a non-cosmetic nose procedure, and is currently in the market for one of those NBA face masks.

Did it come from outer space? The future? According to the packaging, it is a basketball. Its full title is the “Under Armour 295 Spongetech Basketball“, and this week it made its debut as the official ball of Lunchsketball.

The following is printed on the box for the Spongetech ball: “GET MORE SKIN ON THE BALL. Control comes from having more of your fingers and palms on the ball. More skin means more control. More control means more points. And more points… isn’t that why we play the game?”

So they use the Socratic method of marketing over there at Under Armour. They have given customers something to think about, for sure. To follow their thought provoking line of questioning, let us examine their argument point by point:

Does the Spongetech allow more skin on the ball? The answer must be yes. This ball has a network of wide, deep and unconventionally patterned grooves, that do indeed put a greater surface area of one’s fingers in contact with the ball.

Will more skin mean more control? That is hard to say. Shaquille O’Neal probably met the extreme limits for skin in contact with the ball, and that famously didn’t seem to give him more control at the free throw line. Overall, though, he was highly effective at basketball, and scored many points, which must mean that he did have a lot of control in other areas of the game. Since he scored morepoints, it can then be understood that the Under Armour argument is still intact, although it now more than ever rests upon the answer to the question: Why do we play the game?

Here the discussion must turn to Wikipedia, where the answer becomes clear: “Basketball is a team sport, the objective being to shoot a ball through a basket horizontally positioned to score points while following a set of rules.”

There you have it. More points is why the game is played. If you truly know who you are, as a human being formed in the image and likeness of God, then you can arrive at no other conclusion then that the Under Armour 295 Spongetech Street Basketball was designed for you and the game.